New Zealand - Get both sides of fluoride debate

Get both sides of fluoride debate

•  Andrew Bonallack
   
•  19th Jun 2013 8:37 AM

 False teeth in a glass of water in front of the Mastertin Municipal Building for Fluoride story.

I have never had much time for the Fluoride Action Network. Give them a moment in the sun, such as when a reporter rings them as part of a story, and they can sound really exciting. Words like toxicity, hazardous and cancer are buzzy words that sound good in a story. "Scientific evidence" is another phrase that gets thrown around a lot.

I can recollect, when reporting for the Kapiti News, getting a fluoride missive about toxicity levels, but basic maths showed it had calculated the percentages wrong.

Normally, material from FAN gets the delete button or the bin, but all of a sudden, there it is on the front page of the Wairarapa Times-Age. And that's because I had to turn around and say to my reporters: yes, I know a few days ago I told you this stuff was scaremongering rubbish, but now it's news, so get going.

Since Hamilton cut fluoride from its supply, and Hastings is asking the question of its ratepayers, fluoride has become topical. And while I might make my feelings plain in an editorial, a paper's job is to report on circumstances and keep people informed. Masterton still has fluoride, therefore we have to make sure the question gets asked here. From this, the public is better informed towards making up its own mind.

Masterton received seven submissions to its draft plan asking for the removal of fluoride. Only two of these submissions were from Masterton residents. It is standard practice for FAN to place a submission to every council, and they ask their members, regardless of where they live, to do the same. Their website provides attachments and material to support a submission. Admittedly in Hamilton, there were 1385 submissions against fluoride, so there was clearly an engaged debate that went beyond rent-a-voice submissions.

Interest groups can be useful voices of democracy and freedom of speech and they will have done a lot of the research for you. But like the 1080 debate, their research is one-sided. And these groups do not shy away from exaggeration - or worse - to convince you their message is right. My advice is: seek information from both sides.

Shows how an editor has a huge input on what we read. Although his advice on seeking information from both sides is right.

Best comment left is this:

I know Andrew from reading what you have written that the actual research you have done on fluoridation is, well how can I put this, I will try to be nice. very sadly lacking. Have you for instance ever watched a YouTube documentary called, Interview with Dr John Colquhoun 1998. No you haven't because if you had you would have had a very different point of view! He was New Zealand's foremost foremost government fluoridation advocate back in the 80's and was responsible for the fluoridation of Auckland City. He was also given the task of seeing all of NZ fluoridated. Then he discovered that the science he had been following was seriously flawed. He did a 180 degree turn around and against the advice of his MOH bosses went public and as a consequence lost his job. He was a hero because he followed his conscience and amongst other things said that poisoning the children of New Zealand for no reason made no sense at all!

Daily Echo letter

Daily Echo letter

The Great Culling FLUORIDE in Our Water

Central cause of tooth decay overlooked

The main cause of tooth decay is sugar and any discussion about fluoride should include the health impacts of soft drinks, says Nelson Marlborough District Health Board principal dental officer Roby Beaglehole.

Sugar was the common risk factor in tooth decay, obesity and type 2 diabetes, which was likely to bring the New Zealand health system "to its knees" in 10 to 15 years, he said.

The country needed a national strategy to reduce sugar consumption.

"From a public health policy perspective, we need to target sugar, in particular sugar-sweetened beverages like Coke, Pepsi and Powerade."

A 1.5-litre bottle of Coke had 40 teaspoons of sugar and was the No 1 selling item in New Zealand supermarkets, he said.

The Government needed to treat sugary drinks the same way it treated alcohol and tobacco, through taxation and limiting companies' advertising and sponsorship deals. The tax needed to be at least 20 per cent to be effective, Dr Beaglehole said.

"And we need to limit access by removing sugary drinks from vending machines," he said.

"McDonald's sponsor children's soccer where the player of the day gets a free Big Mac voucher. So if we are talking about fluoride, let's also discuss sugar. If you can reduce sugar consumption across the population that can have a massive impact on a number of diseases. People think that's a bit radical but type 2 diabetes will probably bring the health system to its knees in our lifetime."

Your Teeth to Blame for Allergy Issues?

 Your Teeth to Blame for Allergy Issues?
By: Nora Hartfeil
Updated: June 12, 2013

Next time you're feeling under the weather, you may want to head to the dentist.
"Your oral health is so connected to your overall health", says Dr. Christie Leedy, of Abilene Dental.
Whether you're coughing, wheezing, or sneezing, the problem could be in your mouth, not your nose.
"The bacteria, if stirred up in your mouth, can also get down into your system, and into your lungs. That can cause less oxygen to get into your system", says Dr. Leedy.
Bacteria can break off of cavities, and once it hits the bloodstream, your immune system is officially under attack, often causing allergy-like symptoms.
But allergy medications may not help either.
"They are helping dry your sinuses but it will also dry up your mouth. And then you don't have good saliva to help wash the bacteria away. So it's just like this domino effect of one and then the other", explains Leedy.
So besides maintaining you're pearly whites, taking care of your oral hygiene could help you brush up on your overall health.
Doctor Leedy also tells us tooth decay and cavities can lead to much more serious health concerns like heart problems and high blood pressure.
The best way to prevent tooth decay is regular brushing, flossing and dental visits.

Video

The nonsense of water fluoridation by Walter Graham

Worth seeing again.

Open Your Mind (OYM) Radio - Aisling Fitzgibbon - June 9th 2013

Cancer risk

Monday June 10, 2013 (foodconsumer.org) -- Boys who drink fluoridated water are at higher risk for bone cancers as studies have demonstrated.  At higher risk from water fluoridation are not the boys only and bone cancers are not the only malignancies that can be promoted or induced by fluoride, according to a new study released in Journal of Epidemiology.

K. Takahashi and colleagues from University of Tokyo in Japan looked at IARC data from nine communities in the U.S. with 21.8 million residents (mainly white) and found "optimally" fluoridated drinking water was associated with significantly increased risk of cancers in 23 types of cancer......

Parliament - no agreement

Fluoride: Drinking Water

Mike Thornton: To ask the Secretary of State for Health whether a formal agreement was signed between the now abolished South Central Strategic Health Authority and Southern Water to add fluoride to the water supply in (a) Southampton and (b)the South West Hampshire area. [158592]

Anna Soubry: No agreement was signed between South Central Strategic Health Authority, prior to its abolition, and Southern Water to add fluoride to the water supply in Southampton and the South West Hampshire area. The position, as at the end of March 2013, was that the strategic health authority was in discussions with Southern Water in relation to agreeing the terms of the agreement.

By virtue of amendments made to the relevant legislation by the Health and Social Care Act 2012, the statutory functions of strategic health authorities in relation to fluoridation have transferred to the Secretary of State.

Quick analysis of the Alex Jones BBC Interview - 2013

Includes information on Fluoridation.
Educational on how news can be presented to influence you without you knowing

Magnesium Health: Magnesium vs. Fluoride

Forget the Nazi bit but still some good advice.

More worries for Hampshire

Click on picture to enlarge.

They now want to pump Hexafluorosilicic acid into the ground.

New Zealand letter

'At least one will die' as a result of Hamilton's flouridation
Saturday, 8 June, 2013 - 12:35
By M.Godfrey MB.BS. (retired GP) Tauranga

My profession has had a number of embarrassments either due to over-enthusiastic endorsements of a new drug or uncritical acceptance of professorial dictates and as Max Planck so aptly put it: "Changes in science occur funeral by funeral" as we have to wait 50 years for both the professors and their students to die or at least retire.

Water fluoridation using the scrubbed wastes from fertiliser chimneys has now been around for 50 years with the Republic of Ireland (RoI), the USA, Australia and New Zealand being the main users.

A recently released environmental survey from the RoI with mandated fluoridation for 50 years, compared 28 disease incidences with unfluoridated Northern Ireland and the EU. It has shown statistically highly significant and indeed shocking differences.

Diabetes was the highest at over 400% and as this country has almost the same population we can logically assume that the same applies here.

Indeed, preliminary findings have shown similar patterns in all four fluoridating countries. Other markedly elevated incidences included dementia, SIDS (NZ the highest in the world), congenital malformations, impaired thyroid metabolism, chronic respiratory diseases, arthritis, and cancers including breast, prostate.and bone. Osteosarcoma (bone cancer) is thankfully rare but usually fatal.

The association with fluoride exposure in young boys has been proven and with Hamilton having about 4% of the NZ population there would be a statistical certainty that at least one young man will still die within the next few years as a result of that city's past fluoridation.

All of the above adverse health effects linked to contaminated industrial silico-fluorides are costing the country both in human misery and in an ever-increasing health budget. All this is for the sake of saving one tooth according to the latest Australian dental research that studied the effect of 45 years of fluoride (Slade and Spencer 2013). Notably, the same dentists together with Armfield have been trying for years to demonstrate effectiveness.

The pejoritavely identified "nutters, flat-earthers and vociferous minority" campaigning against fluoride include Professors of Dentistry, Professors of Medicine, Nobel Laureates in Chemistry, doctors in numerous specialities and dentists who have all taken the time to actually critically investigate the evidence. They wouldn't be doing it without reason or for pleasure. "Dogs can howl but the caravan won't stop".

Never heard that expression before.

İt ürür, kervan yürür.
Translation: The dogs bark but caravan still moves on.
English equivalent: The dogs bark, but the caravan passes on.
Meaning: Great achievements can't be prevented by insignificant people.

Water and Water Purity

New Zealand - More councils consider removing fluoride from water

More councils consider removing fluoride from water
Published: 7:39AM Friday June 07, 2013 Source: ONE News
Despite pleas from dental experts, more councils are considering removing fluoride from public drinking water.
Hamilton City Council this week voted to stop fluoridating the city's water supply after four days of public submissions.
Hastings District Council and Whakatane District Council are both holding referenda later in the year to determine whether they should also remove fluoride.
But public health experts insist evidence shows fluoride in our water helps protect teeth from decay.

Dr Julia Peters says the decision to remove fluoride is a disappointing one.
"Fluoridation of community water supplies is safe, it's effective, it's economic, and everybody's oral health benefits," she said.
There are now calls for the Government, which recommends fluoridating water, to step in.

Dr Paul Connett Slaps down Duncan Garner On Fluoride issue 6 June2013

Ireland

Minister using 'erroneous data for flouride exposure' warns West Cork scientist

Declan Waugh

MINISTER for Health James Reilly is basing his justification of mandatory fluoridation of Irish water supplies on erroneous data, according to Bandon-based scientist Declan Waugh.

Mr Waugh has written a number of reports that are highly critical of this public health policy, and the concerns raised prompted Minister for Arts Jimmy Deenihan to write to the health minister last October in relation to the matter.

In November, Minister Reilly replied by saying that the exposure of Irish consumers to fluoride from food and beverages represented 7.5% of the safe upper limit. If exposure to fluoride from drinking water is included, he added, it represents 23.9% of the upper safe limit.

The basis of this opinion was a report by the Food Safety Authority of Ireland (FSAI), the Total Diet Study published in 2011, which measured the fluoride contend of certain foods and beverages in Ireland.

On receipt of the letter from Minister Reilly, Mr Waugh wrote to the Minister for Health and his cabinet colleagues on November 11th last to outline that these statements were ‘scientifically and factually incorrect.’ In the interim seven months, Mr Waugh told The Southern Star, no response has been provided.

Mr Waugh, a native of Skibbereen, said that the Minister for Health was suggesting that the total dietary intake of fluoride by the average Irish consumers was 1.65 mg per day from all dietary sources.

However, he contends that this level of fluoride would be the same as what an individual would consume in a single cup of tea using fluoridated water and nothing else. Irish adults are the world’s largest consumers of tea, drinking on average between three and six cups of tea per day. The dietary intake from tea as a beverage on its own would be in the region of 5 mg of fluoride per day or more, excluding all other sources of fluoride......

Daily Echo letter